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THE 
INVOCATION OF SAINTS 











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} 
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f Ἵ 


THE 


Juvocation of Saints 


AN ARTICLE REPRINTED, WITH SLIGHT ADDITIONS, 
FROM THE ‘CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW’ 


BY 


| DARWELL STONE, M.A. 


PRINCIPAL OF DORCHESTER MISSIONARY COLLEGE 


LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
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PREFACE 


Tuis book consists of an article reprinted, with 
slight additions, from the Church Quarterly Review 
for January, 1899. In sending it to the press, the 
author wishes to acknowledge the consideration 
and generosity with which he was consistently 
treated during a period of over ten years by the 
late editor of the Review, Mr. Christopher Knight 
Watson, and to thank the present editor for his 
permission to reprint this article and for other 
kindness. 

The article was written in the first instance 
because it seemed to the author that a matter of 
moment was suffering from controversial handling, 
and that a service might be rendered by the clear 
setting out of important facts. It is now repub- 
lished because he fears that the true issues are 
again likely to be obscured by controversy, and 
because he would fain do what little he can to 


vi THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


promote a calm and reasonable temper in which 
there may be hope of profitable consideration and 
discussion of history and doctrine. 

The author is fully alive to the mischief which 
may result from the unguarded cultus of the saints. 
His own personal preferences, if he may refer to 
them, are strongly for the methods of prayer and 
worship which characterize the Liturgies and 
Offices of the Church rather than for those found 
in the devotions and litanies which popularized 
invocation. So far as the public worship of the 
Church of England is concerned, he recognizes 
that the use of any services outside the Book of © 
Common Prayer can only be right by the sufferance 
of the Bishop of the Diocese. 

But he cannot hide from himself the disastrous 
results which might ensue from wide-spread con- 
demnations of the invocation of saints. The hope 
of a re-united Christendom is a hope which he 
would deem it falsity to Christian principle to 
abandon. However the Church of Rome may 
some day control and check unauthorized devo- 
tions, it cannot be anticipated that she will ever 
reverse the careful and guarded statements of the 


Council of Trent on this subject. And any who 


PREFACE Vii 


should approach her with a demand for such a 
reversal would, in the judgment of the author, be 
placing themselves in a false position. If that be 
so, it follows that to condemn the invocation of 
saints is to put an unjustifiable barrier in the way 
of re-union with the Church of Rome. 

And, if we are told that the hope of re-union 
must for the present at least be rather with the 
Churches of the East than with the rest of the 
Western Church, it is necessary to observe that 
Eastern Christians approve of and practise invoca- 
tion certainly not less than those Christians who 
are in communion with the Pope. 

There is a further reason which weighs on the 
mind of the present writer even more strongly from 
a practical point of view than those which depend 
on the hope of re-union. He is mindful of the 
honest, devout souls in the Church of England 
who have found not only happiness but also a 
means of spiritual growth in the practice which 
some would condemn. If the practice were con- 
trary to Christian principle or to the truths to 
which the Church of Christ is committed, he 
would be among the first to say that, at whatever 
cost, the condemnation must be emphatically 


Vili THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


declared. Believing as he does that the study of 
history does not show such a contradiction, it is 
his conviction that to insist on the wrongfulness 
of the practice would be to narrow the bounds of 
Christian liberty to an extent for which the 
needed authority is lacking. 

For to require the rejection of what the Church 
has not rejected no less impairs the freedom of the 
Christian heritage than to require the affirmation 
of what the Church has not affirmed. 


O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper 
that love thee. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
PREFACE . : ‘ . : P z ‘ » ς oa, RW 
Occasion oF WRITING . . . : ‘ : : Ε woe 
DEFINITION OF INVOCATION OF SAINTS . ‘ ; Ἢ ere ee 
COMPRECATION OF SAINTS. : ; ; ὲ : ; 4. “8 
CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE DEPARTED . : , : - Ἔα. 
PRAYERS OF THE DEPARTED . ‘ : z : ἷ 2 ea 
COMPRECATION IN THE EARLY CHURCH . . ὃ : ἐνὶ τῷ 
ἹΝΥΟΟΑΤΊΟΝ IN THE Harty CHURCH . : Ἶ : ΔΎ Β 
KNOWLEDGE POSSESSED BY THE SAINTS . Ε ᾿ : > « 19 


Limits oF INVOCATION: 
THE CHURCH OF ROME. ὸ ‘ ᾿ A F . 20 
THE RUSSIAN AND GREEK CHURCHES . % i τον 


THOSE WHO MAY BE INVOKED: 


THE EARLY CHURCH Ξ : ; ; ᾿ ὦ +228 
THE CHURCH OF ROME. ‘ F ; ᾶ : ee 
THE RUSSIAN CHURCH . i A : ᾿ : "Ὁ eee 


OFFICIAL TEACHING OF 


THE CHURCH OF ROME . ; ; ; : β , 28 
THE RUSSIAN CHURCH A 5 ‘ 7; : Lae ae 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND , Ἢ ξ ; ; . 80 
ῬΟΙΙΟῪ oF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 3 5 : : Τὰ 


Present NEEDS . 1 A F : ; Σ : : . 60 





THE 


INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


Amone the questions to which recent controversies ἢ 
in the Church of England have directed attention 
is that of the invocation of saints. The custom 
of seeking the prayers of the saints by the use of 
words directly addressed to them has during the 
last few months been condemned by some in high 
authority as in itself objectionable, and as disloyal 
to the English Church. On the other hand, there 
are those who, with a serious sense of responsibility, 
have admitted into their devotions invocations of 
the saints, and are convinced that in so doing they 
have acted with entire loyalty both to the Universal 
Church and to the part of the Church in which the 
Providence of God has placed them. And, apart 
alike from the deliberate condemnation of thinking 
men, and from the serious and thoughtful action of 

1 The controversies alluded to are those which preceded the first 


publication of this paper in the Church Quarterly Review for January 
1899, 


B 


2 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


those who take pains to make their prayers Catholic 
and intelligent, the newspapers have contained 
many letters full of denunciations of devotions 
which the writers have apparently never taken the 
trouble to understand, and have supplied indica- 
tions that such devotions are being widely used with 
that light-heartedness which characterizes much 
religious belief and practice at the present time. 

In these circumstances it has seemed advisable 
to endeavour to present with some degree of fulness 
the historical facts and doctrinal teaching without 
which there cannot be any profitable consideration 
of this question. 

To avoid confusion, it may be well to define 
that the phrase ‘invocation of saints’ is here used 
in the sense ordinarily attached to it at the present 
time, namely, to denote the practice of requesting 
departed saints for the help of their prayers to God. 
And to make the point perfectly clear, the modern 
‘form of the ‘Hail Mary’ may be given as an 
illustration : 


Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; 
blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of 
thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for 
us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. 


1 The first part only of this devotion, ending with the word ‘ Jesus,’ 
appears to have been in use in England in the middle ages. This 
shorter form was in most editions of the Sarwm Breviary and in the 
Primer (see, ¢.g., Maskell, Monumenta ritualia ecclesia Anglicane, 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 3 


The task before us is to consider the evidence as to 
the lawfulness and the expediency of methods of 
devotion of which the ‘ Hail Mary,’ in the form in 
which we have quoted it, is representative. 

A necessary preliminary to the consideration of 
invocation of saints is some treatment of what is 
ordinarily known as comprecation of saints. This 
differs from invocation in the respect that, while in 
invocation the words ‘ pray for us’ or ‘ pray for me’ 
are directly addressed to the saint or saints, in 
comprecation the request for the prayers of the 
saints is addressed to God. To quote again a 
representative instance, an ancient prayer of the 
Latin Church on the feast of St. Stephen ran thus : 


Almighty and eternal God, who didst dedicate the 
firstfruits of the martyrs in the blood of thy holy deacon 
Stephen, grant, we beseech thee, that he who made 
supplication even for his persecutors may stand before 
thee as our intercessor.’ 


Christian thought has continuously clung to the 
belief that the souls of the departed are in a state 


ii. 176). The longer form, as given above, is in the Sarwm Breviary 
of 1531; see, e.g., Procter and Wordsworth, Breviariwm ad uswm 
insignis ecclesia Sarum, ii, 2. 

1 ¢Omnipotens aeterne Deus, qui primitias martyrum in sancti 
levitae Stephani sanguine dedicasti, tribue, quaesumus, ut pro nobis 
intercessor assistat, qui pro suis etiam persecutoribus supplicavit:’ 
see, ¢.g., Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary, p. 6. The same 
prayer, with slight verbal differences, is also in the Gregorian Sacra- 
mentary; see, ¢.g., St. Greg. Mag. t. iii. col. 10 (ed. Bened.). 


Bo 


4 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


of consciousness. Indeed, indications of this fact 
were not wanting in the Old Testament. In spite 
of the gloom which surrounded death before the 
resurrection of our Lord, both Isaiah * and Ezekiel ? 
represent the disembodied souls as still retaining 
consciousness ; and our Lord taught the Sadducees 
that the description of God in the book of Exodus 
as the God of those who had departed this life was 
a sign that they were alive and, it would seem, 
conscious ἰδοῦ The New Testament shows the 
same truth with greater clearness. The imagery 
of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, depict- 
ing a condition of receiving comfort and a state 
of being in torment between death and the end of 
the world,* however little the details of parabolic 
language may in some cases be pressed, could 
hardly have been employed if our Lord had not in- 
tended to represent the departed as still conscious. 
The promise to the penitent robber, ‘ To-day shalt 
thou be with me in Paradise,’*® does not suggest 
that after death his soul would be in a state of 
unconsciousness. The preaching of our Lord in 
the unseen world between His crucifixion and His 
resurrection ° shows that His human soul and the 
souls of those to whom He preached were con- | 


1 Tsa. xiv. 9-10. 2 Ezek. xxxi. 16-17. 
3 Ex. iii. 6; St. Matt. xxii. 29-32. 4 St. Luke, xvi. 19-81. 
> 50. Luke, xxiii. 43. 61 St. Peter, iii. 18-20. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 5 


scious. The ‘souls of them that had been slain 
for the word of God’ whom St. John ‘ saw under- 
neath the altar’’ were in a state of conscious 
activity, and the retention of consciousness is im- 
plied by St. Paul’s description of his anticipated 
condition after death as being ‘to depart and to 
be with Christ, which is far better.’? Following 
the teaching thus contained in Holy Scripture, the 
writers of the early Church habitually regarded the 
souls of the departed as being in the possession of 
conscious life. 

No writer of authority in the early Church ap- 
pears to have doubted that in the case of the holy 
dead to retain consciousness was to retain the power 
of prayer. It would be almost inconceivable that 
those who in this life had learnt to exercise their 
spiritual capacities in dependence upon God should 
on passing through death cease to be able to pray. 
The souls whom St. John saw under the altar were 
engaged in prayer. The general sense of Christian 
thought was well expressed by St. Jerome when he 
wrote : 
if the Apostles and Martyrs, while still in the body, are 
able to pray for others when they still ought to be full of 
care for themselves, how much more can they do so after 


they have been crowned in victory and triumph. One 
man, Moses, obtains pardon from God for six hundred 


. 1 Rev. vi. 9-10. 2 Phil. i. 28. 


6 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


thousand armed men, and Stephen, the imitator of his 
Lord and the first martyr in Christ, begs forgiveness for 
his persecutors ; and shall their power be less after they 
have begun to be with Christ 91 


Indeed, so widespread has been this belief, that 
the fathers of the Council of Chalcedon of 451 ex- 
claimed that the martyr Flavian was praying for 
them,” and the ‘ Saxon Confession’ of 1551 declared 
‘There is no doubt that the blessed pray for the 
Church.’ ? And for those who looked on the saintly 
dead as conscious and as capable of prayer it would 
be a natural inference that it was right to plead 
with God for the benefit of their intercessions. 
Accordingly, we find that all the evidence from 
the teaching and practice of the early Church tends 
to show the existence of belief in the lawfulness 
and utility of asking God for the benefit of the 
prayers of the saints. To quote the Liturgy of St. 
James as an instance of liturgical practice, the 
priest is there directed, after commemorating the 
Blessed Virgin, St. John the Baptist, the apostles 


1 $t. Jer. C. Vigilantiwm, 7, ‘Si apostoli et martyres adhuec in 
corpore constituti possunt orare pro caeteris, quando pro se adhue 
debent esse solliciti, quanto magis post coronas, victorias et triumphos ὃ 
Unus homo Moyses sexcentis millibus armatorum, impetrat a Deo 
veniam, et Stephanus imitator Domini sui et primus martyr in Christo 
pro persecutoribus veniam deprecatur; et postquam cum Christo esse 
coeperint, minus valebunt ?’ 

2 Cone. Chale., Actio xi. (Hardouin, Concilia, ii. 556 p). 

5 Saxon Confession, 22; see, e.g., Sylloge Confessionum, p. 811. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 7 


and evangelists, the prophets and patriarchs, St. 
Stephen, ‘ the first deacon and first martyr,’ and 
all the saints, to go on to say 


not that we are worthy to make mention of their blessed- 
ness, but that they also standing before Thy terrible and 
awful throne may in turn make mention of our sad state, 
and that we may find grace and mercy in Thy sight, 
O Lord, to help us in time of need.’ 


To quote St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical 
Lectures on the Mysteries as an indication of the 
teaching given at Jerusalem in the middle of the 
fourth century, he explains the reference to the 
saints in the Liturgy as a prayer to God for the 
help of their intercessions : 


Then we make mention also of those who have fallen 
asleep before us, first, of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, 
martyrs, that God would at their prayers and intercessions 
receive our supplication.’ 


‘ See Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western, i. 56-7: Ἔτι 
μνησθῆναι καταξίωσον ... . ἐξαιρέτως τῆς παναγίας ἀχράντου ὑπερευλο- 
γημένης δεσποίνης ἡμῶν θεοτόκου καὶ ἀειπαρθένου Μαρίας . . - - πάντων 
τῶν ἀπ᾽ αἰῶνος ἁγίων σου οὐχ ὅτι ἡμεῖς ἐσμὲν ἄξιοι μνημονεύειν τῆς ἐκείνων 
μακαριότητος ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα καὶ αὐτοὶ παρεστῶτες τῷ φοβερῷ καὶ φρικτῷ σου 
βήματι ἀντιμνημονεύσωσι τῆς ἡμῶν ἐλεεινότητος καὶ εὕρωμεν χάριν καὶ ἔλεος 
ἐνώπιόν σου Κύριε εἰς εὔκαιρον βοήθειαν. Cf. ibid. 18-4, 16, 78, 93-4, 
169, 280, 264, 330-1, 338, 406-7, 415, 419, 466. Portions of these 
passages are probably late additions to the Liturgies. That this is not 
the case with regard to the general prayer for the help of the inter- 
cessions of the saints may be seen by comparing the explanation of 
the service quoted from St. Cyril of Jerusalem. 

* St. Cyr. Jer. Cat. Myst. v. 9, Eira μνημονεύομεν καὶ τῶν προκεκοι- 
μημένων, πρῶτον, πατριαρχῶν, προφητῶν, ἀποστόλων, μαρτύρων, ὅπως ὁ 
θεὸς ταῖς εὐχαῖς αὐτῶν καὶ πρεσβείαις προσδέξηται ἡμῶν τὴν δέησιν. 


8 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


And there is no trace of any doubt that it was 
right and wise for the Church on earth to com- 
memorate departed saints as a means of pleading 
that God would grant to the living help in answer 
to their prayers. There is indeed an absence of 
earlier positive testimony than that which we have 
cited. Against this may be set the consideration 
that, granted the undisputed facts of the continued 
life and continued power of prayer of the saints, it 
is simply an ordinary act of the Christian life to 
ask God that their prayers may be of service to us. 
On the distinct but connected subject of the 
invocation of saints, there is no direct evidence in 
Holy Scripture, or in the first two Christian cen- 
turies. In the third century there is little more, 
merely, that is, a passage in Origen of doubtful 
meaning. In his treatise On Prayer Origen, taking 
as a starting point St. Paul’s words ‘I exhort 
therefore that first of all supplications, prayers, 
intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all 
men,’! limits the use of ‘ prayer’ to words addressed 
to God,” and says of ‘ supplications,’ ‘ intercessions,’ 
and ‘ giving of thanks’: 
it is not improper to address these to saints, and two of 


them, I mean intercession and thanksgiving, not only to 


1 18t. Tim. ii. 1. 

* This is not the place to discuss whether Origen’s restriction of 
the offering of ‘ prayer’ in the strict sense to the Father implied any 
disbelief in the true Deity of the Son. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 9 


saints but also to men, but supplication only to saints, as 
for instance to some Paul or Peter, that they may aid us, 
making us worthy to obtain the power granted unto 
them for the forgiveness of sins.’ 


On the ground of the general structure of the 
passage and of a statement made elsewhere by 
Origen that 


every supplication and prayer and intercession and 
thanksgiving is to be sent up to the supreme God through 
the High Priest, who is above all the angels, the living 
Word and God,? 


the ‘ saints’ referred to have been interpreted by 
some writers to be living saints.* On the other 
hand, so competent a critic as Dr. Bigg, who has 
brought to the close study of Origen’s language 
and thought great insight and impartiality, ex- 
presses his opinion that 


Origen no doubt regarded this kind of prayer as lawfully 
offered to saints, whether on earth or in heaven.* 


1 Origen, De Oratione, 14, δέησιν μὲν οὖν καὶ ἔντευξιν καὶ εὐχαριστίαν 
οὐκ ἄτοπον καὶ ἀνθρώποις [‘ Lego cum Bentleo: ἁγίοις; Delarue im loco] 
προσενεγκεῖν, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν δύο, λέγω δὲ ἔντευξιν καὶ εὐχαριστίαν, ov μόνον 
ἁγίοις, ἀλλὰ δὴ καὶ ἀνθρώποις " τὴν δὲ δέησιν μόνον ἁγίοις, εἴ τις εὑρεθείη 
Παῦλος ἢ Πέτρος ἵνα ὠφελήσωσιν ἡμᾶς ἀξίους ποιοῦντες τοῦ τυχεῖν τῆς 
δεδομένης αὐτοῖς ἐξουσίας πρὸς τὰ ἁμαρτήματα ἀφιέναι. 

3. Origen, C. Celswm, v. 4, ᾿ιᾶσαν μὲν γὰρ δέησιν καὶ προσευχὴν καὶ 
ἔντευξιν καὶ εὐχαριστίαν ἀναπεμπτέον τῷ ἐπὶ πᾶσι Θεῷ διὰ τοῦ ἐπὶ πάντων 
ἀγγέλων ἀρχιερέως, ἐμψύχου λόγου καὶ Θεοῦ. 

3 See, 6.9.) Luckock, After Death, pp. 187-8. 

* Bigg, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria, p. 185, note’. 


10 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


After Origen, the earliest evidence bearing on 
the subject is probably a passage in the oration of 
St. Gregory of Nazianzus delivered as a panegyric 
upon St. Cyprian, in which it is told that the virgin 
Justina was assailed by the magician Cyprian, here 
identified with the great Bishop of Carthage before 
his conversion, and in her distress, 


despairing of every other means of help, fled to the 
protection of God, and took as her defender against the 
hateful lust her own bridegroom, who delivered Susanna 
and preserved Thecla, the one from the cruel elders, and 
the other from the tyrannous suitor and her still more 
tyrannous mother, that is her bridegroom Christ ; 


and 
beseeching the Virgin Mary to help a virgin in danger, 


was delivered from her peril.! 

It may be doubted whether the facts here 
described are accurately narrated, or whether, if 
the events took place as thus recorded, much 
could be based on an isolated instance of the 
practice of invocation on the part of one Christian 
virgin in dire distress; but the passage at least 
shows that St. Gregory of Nazianzus saw no 

1 §t. Greg. Naz. Orat. xxiv. 10-11: πάντων ἀπογνοῦσα τῶν ἄλλων, 
ἐπὶ τὸν Θεὸν καταφεύγει καὶ προστάτην moveirat κατὰ τοῦ μισητοῦ πόθου τὸν 
ἑαυτῆς νυμφίον, ὃς καὶ Σωσάνναν ἐῤῥύσατο καὶ Θέκλαν διέσωσεν, τὴν μὲν 
ἀπὸ πικρῶν πρεσβυτέρων, τὴν δὲ ἀπὸ τυράννου μνηστῆρος καὶ τυραννικωτέρας 


’ 4 a ’ a ‘ , [4 > , 
μητρός" τἵνα τοῦτον ; Χριστόν .... ταῦτα καὶ πλείω τούτων ἐπιφεμίζουσα 
καὶ τὴν παρθένον Μαρίαν ἱκετεύουσα βοηθῆσαι παρθένῳ κινδυνευούσῃ; K.T-A. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 11 


improbability in a story of a Christian in the first 
half οὐ the third century seeking the aid, in one 
form or another, of the holy Mother of our Lord. 

About the practice of St. Gregory of Nazianzus 
himself there is no doubt. In addition to other 
invocations elsewhere, he addresses St. Cyprian at 
the end of the oration already quoted : 


Do thou look down on us propitiously from above and 
direct our speech and life, and be a shepherd or a co- 
shepherd to this holy flock; and directing the rest, as far 
as may be, for the best, and driving away the grievous 
wolves, the hunters of syllables and phrases, and bestowing 
on us a more perfect and brighter illumination of the 
Holy Trinity, in Whose presence thou standest, to Whom 
we give worship and glory.’ 


That it was the help of prayer which was 
thus sought from St. Cyprian by St. Gregory of 
Nazianzus may be seen from his address to St. 
Basil in another oration : 


Do thou, divine and sacred one, look down upon us from 
above, and by thy intercessions either stay the thorn in 
the flesh given us by God, our discipline, or persuade us 
to endure it bravely, and direct our whole life for us for 
the best ; and, if we be removed hence, receive us in thy 


St. Greg. Naz. Orat. xxiv. 19, σὺ δὲ ἡμᾶς ἐποπτεύοις ἄνωθεν ἵλεως καὶ 
τὸν ἡμέτερον διεξάγοις λόγον καὶ βίον καὶ τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦτο ποίμνιον ποιμαίνοις 
a ΄ , BA λ > 66 ¢ er x \ , ‘ ‘ 
ἢ συμποιμαίνοις τά Te ἄλλα εὐθύνων ὡς οἷόν Te πρὸς TO βέλτιστον καὶ τοὺς 
βαρεῖς λύκους ἀποπεμπόμενος τοὺς θηρευτὰς τῶν συλλαβῶν καὶ τῶν λεξέων, 

‘ A a ‘ , ‘ -" ι ¥ 
. καὶ τὴν τῆς ἁγίας Τριάδος ἔλλαμψιν, fis σὺ viv παραστάτης, τελεωτέραν τε 
καὶ λαμπροτέραν ἡμῖν χαριζόμενος, ἣν προσκυνοῦμεν, ἣν δοξάζομεν. 


12 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


tabernacles that, living together and together beholding 
more clearly and more completely the holy and blessed 
Trinity, of which we have now in some degree received 
the image, our longing may at last be satisfied, and we 
may gain this recompense for the battles we have fought 
and the attacks we have endured.* 


St. Basil the Great, the contemporary of St. 
Gregory of Nazianzus, and thus after death in- 
voked by him, not only calls the Forty Martyrs 
‘co-operators in prayer’ in a rhetorical address to 
them,” but expressly declares what his own practice 
is, and the object at which it aims: 


I accept also the holy apostles, prophets, and martyrs, and 
Τ call upon them for their intercession to God, that by 
them, that is by their mediation, the good God may be 
propitious to me and that I may be granted redemption 
for my offences.’ 


St. Gregory of Nyssa invokes the martyr 
Theodore : 


1 50. Greg. Naz. Orat. xliii. 82, od δὲ ἡμᾶς ἐποπτεύοις ἄνωθεν, ὦ θεῖα καὶ 
ἱερὰ κεφαλὴ, καὶ τὸν δεδομένον ἡμῖν παρὰ Θεοῦ σκόλοπα τῆς σαρκὸς, τὴν ἡμετέ- 
ραν παιδαγωγίαν,ἢ στήσαις ταῖς σεαυτοῦ πρεσβείαις ἢ πεΐσαις καρτερῶς φέρειν" 
καὶ τὸν πάντα βίον ἡμῖν διεξάγοις πρὸς τὸ λυσιτελέστατον. εἶ δὲ μετασταίημεν, 
δέξαιο κἀκεῖθεν ἡμᾶς ταῖς σεαυτοῦ σκηναῖς, ὡς ἂν ἀλλήλοις συζῶντες καὶ 
συνεποπτεύοντες τὴν ἁγίαν καὶ μάκαρίαν Τριάδα καθαρώτερόν τε καὶ τελεώτερον, 
ἧς νῦν μετρίως δεδέγμεθα τὰς ἐμφάσεις ἐνταῦθα σταίημεν τῆς ἐφέσεως καὶ 

, ,ὔ 2 A [4 ‘ > , 
ταύτην λάβοιμεν ὧν πεπολεμήκαμεν καὶ πεπολεμήμεθα τὴν ἀντίδοσιν. 

* St. Basil, Hom. in quadraginta martyres, 8, δεήσεως συνεργοί. 

5. Idem, Ep. ceclx. (al. cev.) δέχομαι δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἁγίους ἀποστόλους, 
προφήτας, καὶ μάρτυρας, καὶ εἰς τὴν πρὸς Θεὸν ἱκεσίαν τούτους ἐπικαλοῦμαι, 
τοῦ δι’ αὐτῶν, ἤγουν διὰ τῆ f ὑτῶν, trea ἔσθαι τὸν 

᾿ τῆς μεσιτείας αὐτῶν, ἵλεών μοι γενέσ 
φιλάνθρωπον Θεὸν, καὶ λύτρον μοι τῶν πταισμάτων γενέσθαι καὶ δοθῆναι. 
The genuineness of this epistle has been doubted. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 13 


Ask for peace, that these assemblies may not cease, that 
the frantic and lawless barbarian may not rage against 
temples and altars, that the profane may not tread under 
foot that which is holy ; * 


and addresses St. Ephraem : 


Do thou, standing by the divine altar, and ministering 
in company with angels to the all-holy Trinity, the source 
of life, remember all of us, asking for us remission of sins 
and enjoyment of the eternal kingdom.’ 


St. Chrysostom exhorts Christians : 


Let us flee to the intercessions of the saints and let us 
beseech them to pray for us ; ὃ 


and, in the course of a description of the greatness 
of the kingdom of Christ, says : 


The tombs of the servants of the Crucified are more 
splendid than the palaces of kings, not for the greatness 
and beauty of the buildings alone, though even here they 
surpass them, but, what is far more, in the zeal of those 
who frequent them. For even he who is clad in the 
purple himself goes to embrace those tombs, and laying 


τ St. Greg. Nyss. De 5. Theodoro Mart. (t. iii. p. 585, Paris, 1688), 
αἴτησον εἰρήνην iva ai πολυηγόρεις αὗται μὴ λήξωσιν, iva μὴ κωμάσῃ κατὰ 
ναῶν καὶ θυσιαστηρίων λυσσῶν καὶ ἄθεσμος βάρβαρος, ἵνα μὴ πατήσῃ τὰ ἅγια 
βέβηλος. 

'? Idem, De vita 5. patr. Ephraem. Syr. (t. iii. p. 616), σὺ δὲ τῷ θείῳ 
παριστάμενος θυσιαστηρίῳ καὶ τῇ ζωαρχικῇ καὶ ὑπεραγίᾳ λειτουργῶν σὺν 
ἀγγέλοις Τριάδι, μέμνησο πάντων ἡμῶν αἰτούμενος ἡμῖν ἁμαρτημάτων ἄφεσιν 
αἰωνίου τε βασιλείας ἀπόλαυσιν. 

3. St. Chrys. In Genes. Hom. xliv. 2, καταφεύγωμεν μὲν ἐπὶ τὰς τῶν 
ἁγίων πρεσβείας καὶ παρακαλῶμεν ὥστε ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν δεηθῆναι. 


14 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


aside his pride, stands entreating the saints to be his 
advocates with God, and he who has the diadem begs the 
tent-maker and the fisherman, even now that they are 
dead, to be his patrons.! 


St. Ephraem the Syrian addresses the martyrs : 


Victorious martyrs . . . intercede, ye holy ones, on be- 
half of us who are vain and sinners and full of sloth, that 
the grace of Christ may come upon us and enlighten the 
hearts of all the slothful that we may love him.? 

Be ye intercessors before the throne for me who am 
vain, that I may be found there, being saved by the help 
of your intercessions through the grace of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ ; ὃ 


and invokes St. Basil : 


Intercede for me, who am most miserable, and recall me 
by thy intercessions.* 


᾿ St. Chrys. In Ep. ui ad Cor. Hom. xxvi.5, oi τάφοι τῶν δούλων τοῦ 
σταυρωθέντος λαμπρότεροι τῶν βασιλικῶν εἶσιν αὐλῶν, οὐ τῷ μεγέθει καὶ 
τῷ κάλλει τῶν οἰκοδομημάτων μόνον, καὶ τούτῳ μὲν γὰρ κρατοῦσιν, ἀλλ᾽, ὃ 
πολλῷ πλέον ἐστὶ, τῇ σπουδῇ τῶν συνιόντων " καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς ὁ τὴν ἁλουργίδα 
περικείμενος ἀπέρχεται τὰ σήματα ἐκεῖνα περιπτυξόμενος, καὶ τὸν τῦφον 
ἀποθέμενος ἕστηκε δεόμενος τῶν ἁγίων ὥστε αὐτοῦ προστῆναι παρὰ τῷ 
Θεῷ καὶ τοῦ σκηνοποιοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἁλιέως προστατῶν καὶ τετελευτηκότων 
δεῖται ὁ τὸ διάδημα ἔχων. 

2 St. Eph. Syr. Enc. in mart. (Opera Graeca, t. iii. p. 251, Rome, 
1748-6), ἀθλοφόροι padprupes .... πρεσβεύσατε ἅγιοι ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν τῶν 
χαύνων καὶ ἁμαρτωλῶν καὶ μεστῶν ῥαθυμίας ἵνα ἔλθῃ ἐφ᾽ ἡμᾶς ἡ χάρις τοῦ 
Χριστοῦ. καὶ φωτίσῃ καρδίας ἁπάντων τῶν ῥαθύμων, ἵνα αὐτὸν ἀγαπῶμεν. 

3 Ibid. (p. 254), γίνεσθε͵ οὖν πρεσβευταὶ ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ τοῦ χαύνου 
ἔμπροσθεν τοῦ βήματος, ὅπως εὑρεθῶ ἐκεῖ δ ὑμῶν πρεσβειῶν σωζόμενος 
χάριτι τοῦ Κυρίου καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ. 

4 Idem, Enc. in Magn. Bas. (t. ii. p. 296), πρέσβευε ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ τοῦ 
σφόδρα ἐλεεινοῦ καὶ ἀνακάλεσαί pe ταῖς πρεσβείαις σου It will be re- 
membered by scholars that there are difficult questions connected with 
the text of St. Ephraem. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 15 


There is like evidence from the West as from 
the East. St. Ambrose teaches: 


Martyrs are to be besought, whose patronage we seem to 
claim for ourselves by having their bodies as a kind of 
pledge. They who washed away whatever sins they had 
in their own blood are able to entreat for our sins; for 
they are God’s martyrs, our leaders, the spectators of our 
life and actions. Let us not be ashamed to employ 
them as intercessors for our weakness, because they 
themselves have known the weaknesses of the body, even 
when they overcame.’ 


St. Augustine describes the benefit of the 
burial of Christians at the memorials of the Saints 
as being that the living may be reminded to com- 
mend the souls of the departed to those who are 
thus kept in remembrance;’ and, like others of 
the Fathers, is evidently without the slightest 
doubt that recourse to the prayers of the martyrs 
has led to wonderful results.’ 


1 St. Ambrose, De vidwis, 55, ‘ Martyres obsecrandi, quorum vide- 
mur nobis quodam corporis pignore patrocinium vindicare. Possunt 
pro peccatis rogare nostris, qui proprio sanguine, etiam si qua habue- 
runt peccata, laverunt; isti enim sunt Dei martyres, nostri praesules, 
speculatores vitae, actuumque nostrorum. Non erubescamus eos in- 
tercessores nostrae infirmitatis adhibere ; quia ipsi infirmitates corporis, 
etiam cum vincerent, cognoverunt.’ : 

2 St. Augustine, De cwra gerend. pro mortuwis, 6, ‘Cum itaque 
recolit animus ubi sepultum sit carissimi corpus et occurrit locus 
nomine martyris venerabilis, eidem martyri animam dilectam com- 
mendat recordantis et precantis affectus’ (‘ When the mind calls up 
where the body of the loved one is buried and the place venerable by 
the name of the martyr occurs to the thoughts, the love of him who 
remembers and prays commends the loved soul to the same martyr ἢ. 

® Idem, Serm. cceexxiv.; De civit. Dei, xxii. 8; cf. C. Faust. xx. 


16 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


St. Jerome invoked Paula in the words 


Help with thy prayers the extreme old age of thy 
devotee. Thy faith and thy works join thee to Christ; 
being in His presence, thou wilt more easily obtain that 
which thou dost ask.’ 

Such evidence is sufficient to show that at the 
end of the fourth century and the beginning of 
the fifth, it was the ordinary Christian belief in 
the Hast and in the West, that it is lawful and 
expedient to address to the saints supplications 
for the benefit of their prayers to Almighty God. 

An attempt has been made to lessen the im- 
port of this evidence, so far as St. Chrysostom, 
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and St. Ambrose are 
concerned, on the ground that these writers speak 
elsewhere of the necessity of prayer being ad- 
dressed only to God. The probability is that 
these other statements refer to prayers for direct 
help as distinguished from requests for prayer for 
the help of God, and, in any case, it has been 
allowed that the testimony of St. Basil, St. 
Gregory of Nyssa, St. Ephraem the Syrian, and 
St. Augustine in favour of the practice of invoca- 
tion is ‘ unshaken.’ ἢ 


21; cf. St. Greg. Nyss. Oratio im quadraginta martyres (t. 11. 
pp. 211-2). 

1 St. Jerome, Ep. cviii. 88, ‘ Vale, O Paula, et cultoris tui ultimam 
senectutem orationibus juva. Fides et opera tua Christo te sociant, 
praesens facilius quod postulas impetrabis.’ 

3 Luckock, After Death, p. 197. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 17 


It has, indeed, been suggested, on the strength 
of two passages,' that St. Augustine changed his 
mind and that his deliberate opinion was against 
the lawfulness of invocation. Neither of the 
passages supports this suggestion. The first 
declares that the writers of Holy Scripture would 
be grieved if man’s hope were placed in them 
instead of in God; the second says that the 
Kucharistic sacrifice is not offered to the martyrs 
but to God, and that, though commemorated, they 
are not invoked by the priest who offers the 
sacrifice.” It is obvious, when the passages are 
viewed in their context, that the first does not 
bear on the subject of invocation; and that, in 
the second, it is the sacrificial prayer of the 
Liturgy of which it is said it is not addressed to 
the martyrs.® 

We have seen that St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 
while elsewhere specifying that the help sought 
from the saint was the help of prayer, addressed 
St. Cyprian in the words, ‘direct our speech and 
life” Similar requests to the saints came to be 
customary. <A typical instance may be seen in a 
hymn which passed into the office of the Western 


1 50. Augustine, Serm. xlvi. 17; De civ. Dei, xxii. 10. 

2 ‘Non tamen a sacerdote qui sacrificat invocantur.’ 

3. Οὗ Luckock, op. cit., pp. 195, 196. See also the passage in St. 
Augustine, C. Faust. Man. xx. 21. 


σ 


18 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


Church, in which the Mother of our Lord was 


entreated : 
Virgin all excelling, 
Gentle past our telling, 
Pardoned sinners render 
Gentle, chaste, and tender. 


In pure paths direct us, 
On our way protect us, 
Till, on Jesus gazing, 

We shall join thy praising.’ 


Another instance is found in the Antiphon said 
after Compline during part of the year according 
to the Roman Breviary : 


Hail, Queen, Mother of pity; hail, our life, delight, 
and hope. To thee, in our exile do we, the children of 
Eve, cry. To thee we sigh, groaning and weeping in this 
valley of tears. Ah, then, our advocate, turn on us thy 
pitiful eyes. And, after this exile, show unto us Jesus 


1 ¢ Virgo singularis, 
Inter omnes mitis, 
Nos culpis solutos 
Mites fac et castos. 


Vitam praesta puram : 
Iter para tutum, 

Ut videntes Iesum, 
Semper collaetemur.’ 


‘This hymn’ (‘ Ave maris stella’), ‘so well known as to its words is 
of uncertain authorship. It has been wrongly ascribed to St. Bernard, 
as it is found in a St. Gall MS., No. 95, of the ninth century, and to 
Venantius Fortunatus (by M. A. Luchi, 1789), but on insufficient 
authority.’ Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 99. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 19 


the blessed fruit of thy womb. O merciful, O holy, 
O sweet Virgin Mary. 


Side by side with many devotions of which we 
have quoted two representative instances, there 
have been the explanations of theologians, that 
the saints have knowledge of such supplications 
because of their vision of God and of His revela- 
tion to them, and that the help sought is afforded 
by means of prayer to God. Their knowledge, 
St. Gregory the Great teaches, is derived from 
their vision of the ‘ glory of Almighty God.’? 


As to the angels (writes Peter Lombard), so also to 
the saints, who stand before God, our petitions are made 
known in the Word of God whom they contemplate.’ 

It is manifest (says St. Thomas Aquinas) that they 
know in the Word the vows and devotions and prayers 
of men who seek their aid... . God alone knows of 
Himself the thoughts of our hearts, but none the less 
others know them in so far as revelation is made to them 


1 «Salve, Regina, mater misericordix; vita, dulcedo, et spes 
nostra, salve. Ad te clamamus exules, filii Evae. Ad te suspiramus, 
gementes et flentes in hac lacrymarum valle. EHia ergo, advocata 
nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte. Et Jesum, 
benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoe exilium ostende. 
O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria.’ For the history of this 
antiphon see Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, pp. 991-2. 

* St. Greg. Magn. Moralia, xii. 26, ‘Quae intus omnipotentis Dei 
claritatem vident, nullo modo credendum est quia foris sit aliquid 
quod ignorent.’ 

3. Peter Lombard, Sent. IV. xlv. 6, ‘Sicut enim angelis, ita et 
sanctis qui Deo assistunt, petitiones nostrae innotescunt in Verbo Dei 
quod contemplantur,’ 


o 23 


20 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


either by the vision of the Word or in some other 
way.' 

We seek (he writes elsewhere) from the Holy Trinity 
that God may have mercy upon us; we seek from what- 
ever saints we address that they pray for us. ... The 
petitions which we direct to them they know by the 
manifestation of God.? 

God alone (explains Bellarmine) knows all the thoughts 
of all hearts, and that naturally and by His own power; 
but the saints only know those thoughts which are made 
manifest to them by God, whether by the Beatific Vision 
or even by a new revelation.® 

It is not lawful (he says in the same treatise) to seek 
from the saints that they, as authors of divine benefits, 
would grant glory or grace or other means to beatitude. 
. . . When we say that nothing ought to be sought from 
the saints except that they pray for us, we are not 
treating about words, but about the sense of the words. 
For, so far as the words go, it is lawful to say, ‘Saint 
Peter, have mercy on me, save me, open to me the gates 
of heaven, or give me health of body, give patience, give 
fortitude,’ &c., provided we understand, ‘Save me and 


1 $t. Thom. Aq. S. 7. Supplement, lxxii. 1, ‘manifestum est quod 
in Verbo cognoscant vota, et devotiones, et orationes hominum qui ad 
eorum auxilium confugiunt. . . . Cogitationes cordium solus Deus per 
seipsum novit; sed tamen alii cognoscunt quatenus eis revelatur vel 
per visionem Verbi vel quocumque alio modo.’ 

2 Ibid. 115. lxxxiii. 4, ‘A sancta Trinitate petimus ut nostri 
misereatur ; ab aliis autem sanctis quibuscumque petimus ut orent 
pro nobis. . . . Petitiones quas ad eos dirigimus Deo manifestante 
cognoscunt.’ 

3. Bellarmine, De sanc. beat. i. 20, ‘ Dico solum Deum cognoscere 
cogitationes omnes omnium cordium, idque naturaliter et propria 
virtute : sanctos autem solum cognoscere eas quae a Deo ipsis mani- 
festantur sive beatifica visione sive etiam nova revelatione.’ 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 21 


have mercy upon me by praying for me, grant to me this 
and that by thy prayers and merits.’ ἢ 


The Catechism of the Council of Trent made 
the same distinction : 


We pray God that He Himself will either give us 
what is good or set us free from what is evil; but we 
seek from the saints, because they are well pleasing to 
God, that they will become our patrons, that they may 
obtain for us from God those things of which we have 
need. Hence we use two forms of prayer of a different 
kind: for we say properly to God, ‘Have mercy on us, 
Hear us;’ to the saint, ‘ Pray for us.’ 


And the Catechism was careful, following the 
same line of thought as Bellarmine, to say that 
the form, ‘ Have mercy upon us,’ could only rightly 
be addressed to a saint in the.sense of ‘ Have 
mercy by praying for us.’” 


1 Bellarmine, De sanc. beat. i. 17, ‘ Non licet a sanctis petere ut 
nobis tanquam auctores divinorum beneficiorum gloriam, vel gratiam, 
aliaque ad beatitudinem media concedant. . . . Est tamen notandum 
cum dicimus non debere peti a sanctis nisi ut orent pro nobis nos non 
agere de verbis sed de sensu verborum, nam quantum ad verba licet 
dicere: S. Petre, miserere mei, salva me, aperi mihi aditum caeli; 
item da mihi sanitatem corporis, da patientiam, da mihi fortitudinem, 
etc., dummoda intelligamus salva me et miserere mei orando pro me, 
da mihi hoc et illud tuis precibus et meritis.’ 

2 Cat. Cone. Trid. TV. vi. 3-4, ‘Non enim eodem modo Deum et 
sanctos imploramus. Nam precamur Deum ut ipse vel bona det vel 
liberet a malis, a sanctis autem, quia gratiosi sunt apud Deum, petimus 
ut nostri patrocinium suscipiant, ut nobis a Deo impetrent ea quorum 
indigemus. Hine duas adhibemus precandi formulas, modo differentes, 
ad Deum enim proprie dicimus Miserere nobis, audi nos; ad sanctum 
Ora pro nobis.’ ‘Quanquam licet etiam alia quadam ratione petere a 


22 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


So, too, in the Hast, the Russian Bishop 
Macarius writes : 


In venerating the saints as faithful servants, as 
righteous men, and as friends of God, the holy Church 
invokes them in her prayers, not as gods capable of 
affording us assistance by themselves, but as our inter- 
cessors with God, who is the only author and dispenser of 
every gift and every grace to all His creatures.’ 


Similar statements are in the representative 
Catechisms of the Greek Church. In the Cate- 
chism of Bernardakis, in reply to the question 


Do we sin against this [the first] commandment 
because we invoke the Holy Theotokos and the other 
saints ? 


the answer is given 


We do not sin, because we do not make gods of these 
saints, but only invoke them to intercede for us with 
God.? 


The Catechism of Kyriakos has the explana- 
tion 


sanctis ipsis ut nostri misereantur; sunt enim maxime misericordes, 
itaque possumus precari eos ut conditionis nostrae miseria permoti, sua 
nos apud Deum gratia et deprecatione iuvent.’ 

1 The above is translated from the French translation of the Russian 
work : see Théologie Dogmatique Orthodoze, ii. 660. 

3 Ἱερὰ Κατήχησις, p. 86, Δὲν ἁμαρτάνομεν, διότι δὲν θεοποιοῦμεν τοὺς 
ἁγίους τούτους, ἀλλὰ μόνον τοὺς παρακαλοῦμεν νὰ μεσιτεύσουν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν 
εἰς τὸν Θεόν. There is almost an identical statement in Moschakis, 
᾿Ορθόδοξος Χριστιανικὴ κατήχησις, ὃ 60. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 23 


Prayer, properly speaking, is directed to God; but, if 
we pray also to the saints, we do this, not because we 
look on them as a sort of gods, who are able of themselves 
to help us—God forbid such blasphemy !—but because 
we believe that, as friends of God by reason of their 
holiness and moral purity, they intercede with Him on 
our behalf by means of their prayers, as also we who are 
alive pray for one another, and can ask for one another’s 
prayers.’ 


These are the careful distinctions of theo- 
logians. It may be doubted whether the majority 
of those who in the Middle Ages used such 
devotions as we have described, or of those who 
use them now, have thought otherwise than that 
their words were directly heard by the saint, and 
that the help afforded included much more than 
prayer. ; 
We have hitherto ignored the question who, 
in the judgment of those who have practised invo- 
cation of saints, may be invoked. On this point 
clear distinctions are not found in early theology. 
By an argument from analogy it may be thought 
probable that, as the Liturgies and the teaching of 
St. Cyril of Jerusalem distinguish the great saints 


1 Χριστιανικὴ Κατήχησις, ὃ 44, Ἣ προσευχὴ ἀποτείνεται κυρίως πρὸς 
4 4 > δὲ ὃ , 6, Α 4 ‘ ΄ “- , > + ὃ , 
τὸν Θεὸν, ἐὰν δὲ δεώμεθα καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἁγίους, τοῦτο πράττομεν οὐχὶ διότι 
θεωροῦμεν αὐτοὺς ὡς θεούς τινας οἵτινες ἠδύναντο ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν νὰ βοηθήσωσιν 
ἡμᾶς, ἄπαγε τῆς βλασφημίας ' ἀλλὰ διότι ὡς φίλοι τοῦ Θεοῦ ἕνεκα τῆς 
~ - - ὰ 

ἁγιότητος καὶ ἠθικῆς αὐτῶν καθαρότητος πιστεύομεν ὅτι διὰ τῶν δεήσεων 

΄“- ΄“ -“- - ξ 
αὐτῶν πρεσβεύουσιν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν αὐτῷ, ὅπως καὶ οἱ ζῶντες προσευχόμεθα ὑπὲρ 
ἀλλήλων καὶ δυνάμεθα νὰ αἰτῶμεν ἀλλήλων τὰς δεήσεις. 


24 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


from the general body of the faithful departed 
with a view to asking God for the prayers of the 
former and to praying for the latter, so invocation 
would naturally be addressed only to the great 
saints. Some doubt may be cast on the sound- 
ness of this inference, possibly by two passages in 
the writings of St. Gregory of Nazianzus,! and 
more probably by the general indefiniteness of 
early theology as to distinctions among the holy 
dead. In the West the ordinary practice which 
the Middle Ages inherited from the later patristic 
period, and bequeathed to the modern Roman 
Church, was to restrict invocation to the canonized 
saints. Though the ordinary practice, it has not 
been regarded as the only possibility ; and at the 
present time there are two schools of thought on 
the subject among Roman Catholics. St. Thomas 
Aquinas repudiated the invocation of the souls in 
purgatory on the grounds that ‘they do not yet 
enjoy the vision of the Word,’? and that ‘they are 
not in a condition of offering prayer.’* On the 

1 He invokes Constantius and any kings before him who loved 
Christ with the saving clause ‘ If thou hast perception (εἴ ris αἴσθησις) : 
see Orat. iv. 8. He invokes his sister Gorgonia with a similar saving 
clause: see Orat. viii. 23. But both these are simply rhetorical 
addresses differing considerably from the invocations already quoted 
from St. Gregory of Nazianzus and others. 

2 St. Thomas Aquinas, 5.1, ΤΙ". lxxxiii. 4, ‘illi qui sunt in hoe 
mundo aut in purgatorio nondum fruuntur visione Verbi ut possint 


cognoscere ea quae nos cogitamus vel dicimus.’ 
8 Ibid. 11, ‘non sunt in statu orandi.’ It may be worth while for 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 25 


other hand, Bellarmine teaches ‘there is no doubt 
that’ the souls in purgatory ‘ pray for themselves,’ 
and ‘it is probable that they pray for us.’ He 
thinks it unnecessary under ordinary circum- 
stances to make requests for their prayers, but 
does not deny the lawfulness of doing so.’ And to 
quote a modern writer, the Jesuit Schouppe thinks 
the greater probability is in favour of the opinion 
that ‘the souls in purgatory pray for us,’ and 
describes as probable the view that 


it is lawful to invoke the souls in purgatory as it is lawful 
to ask for the prayers of holy men who are living on 
earth, though this is a practice which the custom of the 
Church has not publicly adopted.? 


The different view taken by Eastern Christians 
of the state of the dead and the rejection in the 
East of the clear cut distinctions between departed 
souls who are among the saved customary in 


those who are interested in St. Thomas’s view of the state of the dead 
to consult Cajetan’s commentary on this article of the Swmma. 

? Bellarmine, De Purgatorio, ii. 15, ‘Non est incredibile etiam 
animas purgatorii pro nobis orare et impetrare ;’ ‘non videtur dubium 
quin pro se ipsis orent;’ ‘ probabile est eas pro nobis orare;’ ‘ quam- 
quam haec vera sint, tamen superfluum videtur ab eis ordinarie petere 
ut pro nobis orent, quia non possunt ordinarie cognoscere quid agamus 
in particulari sed solum in genere sciunt nos in multis periculis 
versari.’ 

* Schouppe, Hlementa Theologiae Dogmaticae, xix. 121, ‘ Proba- 
bilius animae purgatorii orant pro nobis praesertim eas iuvantibus. 
. « « « Probabilis quoque est sententia Bellarmini licitum esse animas 
purgatorii invocare sicut preces piorum hominum in terris viventium 
licet poscere, quod tamen Ecclesia publice facere non consuevit.’ 


26 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


mediaeval Western and modern Roman theology 
necessarily results in this question as to the 
persons who may be invoked being regarded alto- 
gether differently in the East. Mr. A. Ὁ. 
Headlam has pointed out that the invocation of 
the faithful departed generally is ‘the habitual 
custom of the Russian Church,’ and has illustrated 
the extent to which this custom is popularly 
adopted by observing : 


Often, when a child who has lost its mother is praying, 
he may be heard adding her name to those of the other 
saints whom he asks to pray for him. Mutual prayer of 
the dead for the living, of the living for the dead, and of 
both for the whole Church, is to the Russian the bond 
which links together the Church in one Communion of 
Saints.' 


And, as Mr. Headlam has noticed, there is an 
example of such prayers in a poem by the theo- 
logian Khomiakoff which was translated by Mr. W. 
Palmer : 


Dear children, at that same still midnight do ye, 
As I once prayed for you, now in turn pray for me; 
Me who loved well the Cross on your foreheads to trace ; 
Now commend me in turn to the mercy and grace 
Of our gracious and merciful God.? 


1 Headlam, The Teaching of the Russian Church, p. 20, note 2. 

2 This poem is quoted in Russian and in Mr. Palmer’s English 
translation in Birkbeck, Russia and the English Church during the 
last Fifty Years, pp. 2, 3. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 27 


In Khomiakoff’s Essay on the Unity of the 
Church he has explained at some length the 
theological principle which underlies this practice : 


We know that when any one of us falls, he falls 
alone ; but no one is saved alone. He who is saved is 
saved in the Church, as a member of her, and in unity 
with all her other members. If any one believes, he is in 
the communion of faith; if he loves, he is in the com- 
munion of love; if he prays, he is in the communion of 
prayer. Wherefore no one can rest his hope on his own 
prayers, and every one who prays asks the whole Church 
for intercession, not as if he had doubts of the intercession 
of Christ, the one Advocate, but in the assurance that the 
whole Church ever prays for all her members. All the 
angels pray for us, the apostles, martyrs, and patriarchs, 
and above them all the Mother of our Lord, and this holy 
unity is the true life of the Church. But if the Church, 
visible and invisible, prays without ceasing, why do we 
ask her for her prayers? Do we not entreat mercy of God 
and Christ, although His mercy preventeth our prayer? 
The very reason that we ask the Church for her prayers 
is that we know that she gives the assistance of her inter- 
cession even to him that does not ask for it, and to him 
that asks she gives it in far greater measure than he asks: 
for in her is the fulness of the Spirit of God. Thus we 
glorify all whom God has glorified and is glorifying ; for 
how should we say that Christ is living within us, if we 
do not make ourselves like unto Christ? Wherefore we 
glorify the saints, the angels, and the prophets, and more 
than all the most pure Mother of the Lord Jesus, not 
acknowledging her either to have been conceived without 
sin, or to have been perfect (for Christ alone is without 


28 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


sin and perfect), but remembering that the pre-eminence, 
passing all understanding, which she has above all God’s 
creatures, was borne witness to by the angel and by 
Elizabeth, and, above all, by the Saviour Himself when 
He appointed John, His great Apostle and seer of 
mysteries, to fulfil the duties of a son and to serve her. 
. . . Mutual prayer is the blood of the Church, and the 
glorification of God her breath. We pray in a spirit of 
love, not of interest, in the spirit of filial freedom, not of 
the law of the hireling demanding his pay. 


On a subject on which there has been so much 
rash and ignorant writing, from more points of 
view than one, as that of the invocation of saints, 
it may be well, before proceeding to set out the 
treatment which the matter has received in the 
Church of England, to quote two authoritative 
statements, the one of the Church of Rome, the 
other of the Russian Church. 

The decree of the Council of Trent on the inyo- 
cation of saints declares : 


The saints reigning together with Christ offer their 
prayers to God on behalf of men, and it is good and 
useful to invoke them as suppliants and to take refuge in 
their prayers, support, and help, on account of the bene- 
fits to be obtained from God through His Son Jesus 
Christ our Lord, Who is our only Redeemer and Saviour ; 
and those who deny that the saints enjoying eternal 


1 Birkbeck, Russia and the English Church, pp. 216, 219. The 
whole passage from which the above is an extract is well worth careful 
thought. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 29 


felicity in heaven are to be invoked, or who assert that 
they do not pray for men, or that the invocation of them 
to obtain their prayers for us even as individuals is 
idolatry, or that it is contrary to the Word of God and 
opposed to the honour of Jesus Christ, the one mediator 
of God and men, or that to supplicate verbally or mentally 
those who are reigning in heaven is foolish, hold an 
impious opinion." 


‘ All superstition,’ the Council added later on, 
‘in the invocation of saints is to be put down.’ ? 

The Longer Catechism of the Russian Church 
asserts : 


The faithful who belong to the Church militant upon 
earth, in offering their prayers to God, call at the same 
time to their aid the saints who belong to the Church 
in heaven; and these, standing on the highest steps of 
approach to God, by their prayers and intercessions 
purify, strengthen, and offer before God the prayers of 
the faithful living upon earth, and by the will of God 


1 Cone. Trid. Sess. xxv. De wmvoc., vener., et relig. sanctorwm, et 
sac. wmag., ‘Mandat sancta synodus omnibus episcopis et ceteris 
docendi munus curamque sustinentibus αὖ... fideles diligenter in- 
struant, docentes eos sanctos una cum Christo regnantes orationes 
suas pro hominibus Deo offerre, bonum atque utile esse suppliciter 
eos invocare et ob beneficia impetranda a Deo per Filium eius Iesum 
Christum Dominum nostrum qui solus noster redemptor et salvator 
est, ad eorum orationes, opem auxiliumque confugere: illos vero, qui 
negant sanctos aeterna felicitate in caelo fruentes invocandos esse, aut 
qui asserunt vel illos pro hominibus non orare, vel eorum ut pro nobis 
etiam singulis orent invocationem esse idololatriam, vel pugnare cum 
verbo Dei adversarique honori unius mediatoris Dei et hominum Jesu 
Christi, vel stultum esse in caelo regnantibus voce vel mente suppli- 
care, impie sentire’ (Hardouin, Concilia, x. 167-8). 

2 Ibid. ‘Omnis porro superstitio in sanctorum invocatione... 
tollatur’ (Hard. x. 169). 


80 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


work graciously and beneficently upon them, either by 
invisible virtue, or by distinct apparitions, and in divers 
other ways.* 


At various points in the history of the 
Reformation in the Church of England the sub- 
ject of invocation of saints was necessarily in 
view. In 1536 the Articles about religion set forth 
by the Convocation and published by the king’s 
authority, generally known as the ‘ten articles,’ 
were drawn up and sanctioned by Convocation, 
signed by the members of Convocation, headed by 
Thomas Cromwell, and issued in the name of King 
Henry VIII. Of these the seventh and eighth 
were entitled ‘of honouring of saints’ and ‘of 
praying to saints.’ They laid down: 


As touching the honouring of saints, we will that all 
bishops and preachers shall instruct and teach our people 
committed by us unto their spiritual charge that saints 
now being with Christ in heaven be to be honoured of 
Christian people in earth, but not with that confidence 
and honour which are only due to God, trusting to attain 
at their hands that which must be had only of God; but 
that they be thus to be honoured because they be known 
the elect persons of Christ, because they be passed in 
godly life out of this transitory world, because they 
already do reign in glory with Christ, and most specially 
to laud and praise Christ in them for their excellent 
virtues which He planted in them, for example, of and by 


1 Blackmore, The Doctrine of the Russian Church, p. 78. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 31 


them to such as are yet in this world to live in virtue and 
goodness, and also not to fear to die for Christ and His 
cause, as some of them did; and finally to take them, in 
that they may, to be the advancers of our prayers and 
demands unto Christ. By these ways, and such like, be 
saints to be honoured and had in reverence, and by none 
other. 

As touching praying to saints, we will that all 
bishops and preachers shall instruct and teach our people 
committed by us unto their spiritual charge that albeit 
grace, remission of sin, and salvation cannot be obtained 
but of God only by the mediation of our Saviour Christ, 
which is only sufficient mediator for our sins, yet it is 
very laudable to pray to saints in heaven everlastingly 
living, whose charity is ever permanent, to be intercessors, 
and to pray for us and with us unto Almighty God after 
this manner: All holy angels and saints in Heaven pray 
for us and with us unto the Father that for His dear Son 
Jesus Christ’s sake we may have grace of Him and 
remission of our sins with an earnest purpose, not 
wanting ghostly strength, to observe and keep His holy 
commandments and never to decline from the same again 
unto our lives’ end: and in this manner we may pray to 
our blessed Lady, to St. John Baptist, to all and every of 
the apostles or any other saint particularly, as our devo- 
tion doth serve us, so that it be done without any vain 
superstition, as to think that any saint is more merciful, 
or will hear us sooner than Christ, or that any saint 
doth serve for one thing more than other, or is patron of 
the same.’ 


1 See, e.g., Lloyd, Formularies of Faith put forth by Authority 
during the Reign of Henry VIII., pp. 14-15. 


32 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


In 1537 a commission of bishops and divines 
under the presidency of Archbishop Cranmer drew 
up The Institution of a Christian Man, commonly 
known as the ‘ Bishops’ Book.’ It was signed by. 
both the archbishops, all the diocesan bishops, and 
twenty-five doctors. It had no authority from 
either Convocation or Parliament, and King Henry 
VIII., though he ordered the reading of some part 
of it every Sunday for three years, refused to give 
it any formal sanction. In treating of the third 
commandment, this book contained the following 
teaching : 


We think it convenient that all bishops and preachers 
shall instruct and teach the people committed unto their 
spiritual charge that (forasmuch as the gifts of health of 
body, health of soul, forgiveness of sins, the gift of grace, 
or life everlasting, and such other, be the gifts of God and 
cannot be given but by God) whosoever maketh invoca- 
tion! to saints for these gifts, praying to them for any of 
the said gifts, or such like (which cannot be given but by 
God only), yieldeth the glory of God to His creature, 
contrary to this commandment. For God saith by His 
prophet, I will not yield my glory to any other. There- 
fore they that so pray to saints for these gifts, as though 
they could give them, or be the givers of them, transgress 
this commandment, yielding to a creature the honour of 
God. Nevertheless, to pray to saints to be intercessors 


1 On this use of the word ‘ invocation’ to denote requests for what 
can be given only by God as distinct from request for prayers, see 
pp. 36, 37. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 33 


with us and for us to our Lord for our suits which we 
make to Him, and for such things as we can obtain of 
none but of Him, so that we make no invocation! of 
them, is lawful and allowed by the Catholic Church.’ 


In 1540 a commission, consisting of the two 
archbishops, six bishops, and twelve doctors, was 
appointed to draw up a statement of doctrine. In 
1543 they had completed a revision of The In- 
stitution of a Christian Man which was submitted 
to and approved by Convocation and published 
with the authority of the king under the title of A 
necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian 
Man. It came to be known as the ‘ King’s Book.’ 
It repeated the instruction of the ‘ Bishops’ Book’ 
on the subject of the invocation of saints, with 
the exception that the phrase ‘so that we make 
no invocation of them’ was altered into ‘so that 
we esteem not or worship not them as givers of 
those gifts, but as intercessors for the same.’ ὃ 

Thus, the attitude taken up in the ‘ten 
articles’ of 1536, the ‘ Bishops’ Book’ of 1537, 
and the ‘King’s Book’ of 1543 was clear and 
consistent. It was declared to be unlawful to seek 
from the saints those good things which can only 
be given by God; it was declared to be lawful 

1 See note, p. 32, and pp. 36, 37. 
2 Lloyd, Formularies of Faith put forth by Authority during the 


Reign of Henry VIILI., p. 141. 
5 Ibid. pp. 304-5. 


84 THE INVOCATION. OF SAINTS 


to ask them for their prayers. In conformity 
with such teaching the words ‘Have mercy upon 
us,’ or ‘Grant us grace,’ or ‘ Bestow on us ever- 
lasting life,’ could only be addressed to a saint if 
their obvious meaning were explained away; the 
words ‘Pray for us’ might rightly be addressed 
to a saint. This is a position which, it is well to 
observe, is in substantial agreement with that taken 
up in the Catechism of the Council of Trent. 

The Latin and English Litanies of the Middle 
Ages had contained long lists of the names of 
saints, each name followed by ‘ Pray for us.’ In 
1544 Cranmer, at the king’s command, revised the 
old Litanies and produced a form in which the 
only remaining invocations were : 

Saint Mary, Mother of God our Saviour Jesus Christ, 
pray for us. 


All holy angels and archangels, and all holy orders of 
blessed spirits, pray for us. 


All holy patriarchs and prophets, apostles, martyrs, 
confessors, and virgins, and all the blessed company of 
heaven, pray for us.’ 

In the revision of the service books which went 
on from 1549 to 1662 and resulted in the present 
Book of Common Prayer, all invocations of saints 
were omitted. Of the services thus dealt with, 
invocations had never formed part of the Order or 


1 See, e.g., Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, 
p. 415. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 35 


Canon of the Mass; where they occurred elsewhere 
they were removed. 

In 1553 the ‘forty-two articles,’ which had 
been drawn up by Archbishop Cranmer with the 
help of other bishops, were issued with the inten- 
tion that they should be subscribed by the clergy. 
They bore the title Articles agreed wpon by the 
bishops and other learned men im the synod at 
London in the year of our Lord God MDLIL,, 
for the avoiding of controversy in opinions and the 
establishment of a godly concord in certain matters 
of religion; but it is doubtful whether they had 
received the sanction of Convocation... The 
twenty-third article contained the words: 


The doctrine of school authors concerning . . . invoca- 
tion of saints is a fond thing vainly feigned and grounded 
upon no warrant of Scripture but rather repugnant to the 
word of God. 


The ‘thirty-eight articles’ of 1563 and the 
‘thirty-nine articles’ of 1571 were sanctioned by 
Convocation and approved by Queen Elizabeth. 
The twenty-second article was similar to the 
twenty-third of 1553, but the phrase ‘ the doctrine 
of school authors’ was altered to ‘the Romish 
doctrine,’ which in the Latin version was rendered 

1 On this point, see Dixon, History of the Church of England 


from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction, iii. 518-7; Gibson, 
The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, i. 15-20. 


Dg 


86 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


by ‘doctrina Romanensium,’ and the words ‘in- 
vented’ and ‘warranty’ were used instead of 
‘feigned’ and ‘ warrant.’ 

In considering what it was which the com- 
pilers of our present Articles thus condemned as 
‘a fond thing vainly invented,’ it is necessary to 
examine the meaning of two phrases— invocation 
of saints’ and ‘ Romish doctrine.’ 

It has been assumed by very many that the 
phrase ‘ invocation of saints ’ is used in the Article 
in the same sense as that which we have defined 
as our own way of using it, namely, to denote the 
addressing of requests to the saints for the help of 
their prayers. It is very doubtful whether this is 
the meaning which the compilers of the Article 
attached to it. In two thoughtful letters which 
appeared in the Guardian for October 5 and 
November 9, 1898, Mr. Leighton Pullan called 
attention to the fact that in The Institution of a 
Christian Man, published in 1537, and in Arch- 
bishop Ussher’s Answer to a Jesuit Challenge, 
published in 1624, the phrase ‘invocation of 
saints’ was used to denote ‘addresses to the 
saints similar in wording to the adoration which 
we render to God,’ and ‘formal and absolute 
prayers ’ ‘tendered to the saints’ as distinguished 
from ‘requests for the prayers of the saints’ and 
‘requests of the same nature with those which are 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 37 


in this kind usually made unto the living.’ We 
_ have already referred to the passage in the Neces- 
sary doctrine and erudition for any Christian Man, 
published in 1543, in which the word ‘invoca- 
tion’ is retained in this sense in one of the two 
places in which it was so used in the passage we 
then quoted from The Institution of a Christian 
Man. In the Considerationes modestae et pacificae 
of Bishop William Forbes of Edinburgh, published 
in 1658, but necessarily written before the 
Bishop’s death in 1634, while the use of the 
word ‘invocation’ varies, a distinction is drawn 
between ‘religious invocation,’ or such prayer as 
can be rightly addressed only to God, and ‘ mere 
invocation or addressing of angels and saints to 
pray God with us and for us,’ a practice which 
‘is not to be condemned either as unlawful or as 
useless’ (ii. 194-5, 210-11). The fact that ‘ invo- 
cation’ was used in 1537 and 1543 to denote 
prayers for gifts of grace such as God only can 
give, and that some survival of this use remained 
in the early part of the seventeenth century, 
shows that it is at least possible that this is the 
meaning which was attached to it in 1553, 1563, 
and 1571. 

What, then, is the meaning of the other 
phrase? It is important to notice the change 
made in 1563 from ‘doctrine of school authors’ 


38 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


(‘scholasticorum doctrina’) to ‘Romish doctrine’ 
(‘doctrina Romanensium’). The statement of 
Bishop Harold Browne, that to know what this is 
‘we must consult the decrees of the Council of 
Trent,’ ’ may be set aside by simply observing that 
the Article with this phrase in it was subscribed 
by the Upper House of Convocation on January 
29, 1563, and the Lower House of Convocation in 
February, 1563 ;” while the Session of the Council 
of Trent in which this subject was discussed did 
not take place till December, 1563.? Since the 
article was altered so as not to express condemna- 
tion of the teaching of the Schoolmen, and could 
not because of its date have been written or 
accepted with the decree of the Council of Trent 
in view, what was the idea which the phrase 


1 Browne, An Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, p. 517. 

2 See e.g., Cardwell, Synodalia, ii. 511, 514, 516. That is, 1563 
according to our division of the year; it was 1562 according to the old 
reckoning. 

3 See, Theiner, Acta Conc. Trid. ii. 499-503, 679 ; Hardouin, Con- 
cilia, x. 167. Cf.also Gibson, The Thirty-nine Articles, ii. 538, ‘ With 
regard to the doctrines here condemned, it is important to bear in mind 
that when the Article was originally drawn up, and even when it was 
revised and republished in 1563, none of them had been considered by 
the Council of Trent. The Article cannot, then, have been deliberately 
aimed at the formal decrees of that Council; and, as a matter of fact, 
the decrees on these particular subjects, which were published during 
the last session of the Council in December 1563, were drawn up with 
studied moderation, and some of the strong language of our Article 
could hardly be truthfully said to apply to the doctrine as stated in them, 
though it certainly was not one whit too strong in its condemnation of 
the current practice and teaching which the Reformers had before 
them.’ 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 39 


‘Romish doctrine ’ (‘ doctrina Romanensium’) was 
intended to convey? The term ‘ Romanenses,’ 
Archdeacon Hardwick pointed out, was already in 
use ‘to designate the extreme mediaeval party.’ ἢ 
The change implied, wrote Dean Plumptre, that 
the condemnation was directed ‘against the 
popular current teaching of the Romish theologians 
of the time.’* ‘ Romish doctrine,’ say Dr. Maclear 
and Mr. Williams, was ‘an expression used in the 
sixteenth century to denote the [teaching of the] 
extreme mediaeval party in the Church.’? These 
statements of moderate and thoughtful men indi- 
cate what we believe to be the true meaning of the 
phrase. The Article, in our judgment, was in- 
tended to condemn the practices which had already 
been condemned in 1537 and 1543 by the ‘ Bishops’ 
Book’ and the ‘ King’s Book,’ and to leave open 
the right or the wrong of the limited practice of 
asking the saints for the help of their prayers, 
which those books had allowed. ‘Nothing, I 


1 Hardwick, History of the Articles, p. 410. 

2 Plumptre, The Spirits in Prison, pp. 307-8, ‘It was directed, not 
so much against the formulated statements of Lombard or Aquinas, 
still less against the earlier teaching of the Greek and Latin Fathers, 
as against the popular current teaching of the Romish theologians of 
the time; and so far as the Tridentine decrees, with whatever reserves 
and limitations, embodied that teaching, they come under that condem- 
nation.’ The phrase would perhaps be more accurate if ‘ popular 
current Roman teaching’ had been used instead of ‘ popular current 
teaching of the Romish theologians.’ 

3 Maclear and Williams, An Introduction to the Articles of the 
Church of England, p. 263. 


40 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


think, can be clearer,’ wrote Dr. Hort, ‘than that 
the Article does not condemn all doctrine that may 
be called a doctrine of purgatory.’’ And, if it does 
not condemn every doctrine of purgatory, neither 
does it condemn every doctrine ‘ concerning ’ ‘ inyvo- 
cation of saints.’ ἢ 

The Church of England, then, in the course of 
the Reformation did three things with regard to 
the invocation of saints. In the first place, she 
entirely removed any kind of invocation from the 
service books. Secondly, in the Articles drawn up 
in order that they might form a statement which 
the clergy must agree not to contravene in their 
public teaching, she condemned the extreme prac- 
tices and ways of thought in which the saints had 
been called upon to grant boons which are in the 
power of God alone, and had been given a pro- 
minence in devotion which was derogatory to the 
honour of God. Thirdly, in the same document 
she left it an open question whether the clergy 
might express approval of the practice of invoca- 
tion of saints in the limited sense of seeking from 
the saints the help of their prayers. 


1 See Life and Letters of F. J. A. Hort, ii. 336. 

? The second part of the Homily concerning Prayer in the Homilies 
of Queen Elizabeth’s reign condemns any kind of invocation of saints. 
But most of what is said is applicable only to such forms of invocation 
as infringe the prerogatives of God. On the non-authoritative character 
of the Homilies see Gibson, The Thirty-nine Articles of the Chwrch 
of England, ii. 726-8. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 41 


How far was the position thus taken up by the 
Church of England in accordance with Catholic 
theology and practice ? How far was it wise and 
expedient ? Such a policy was, of course, open to 
the objections and the attacks which are always 
likely to assail any form of a via media. Romanist 
and Puritan alike found much to say against the 
whole attitude adopted by the English Church. To 
resolve deliberately, as the Church of England did, 
that, affirming with the greatest clearness and 
strength the fundamental doctrines of the Christian 
Faith, she would leave it possible for differing 
modes of thought on much which was subsidiary 
to be held both by her clergy and by her laity, and 
would allow, to use the Bishop of Rochester’s 
expression, ‘men who seemed very near to the 
Roman and Puritan positions respectively’! to 
remain and minister within her fold, was a line of 
action which almost courted the onslaughts of very 
different antagonists, and has at various times 
strained almost to breaking point the loyalty of 
sections of Church people. Yet, it has been 
steadily maintained in official statements when 
individuals on every side seemed ready to abandon. 
it; the calm judgment of far-sighted divines set 


1 See the Bishop of Rochester’s letter in the Tvmes of September 12, 
1898. Part of this letter was quoted in the Church Quarterly Review, 
October, 1898, p. 35. 


42 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


their seal upon it when the Reformation was com- 
pleted in 1662 ; it has at least left open possibilities 
of good which else must have been closed. 

Let us examine separately in this particular 
matter the three parts of the action of the English 
Church. The first part was the removal of any 
kind of invocation from the service books. For 
such a proceeding there was much to be said from 
two points of view. It was a return to early 
custom, since for almost six hundred years from 
the foundation of Christianity no invocations of 
saints were to be found in the authorized services 
of the Church. It was a practical necessity of the 
times if the aim of the English Church to possess 
a form of public worship which could be used by 
those who, being agreed upon the essentials of the 
Faith, differed about much else was to be carried 
out. | 

Secondly, the clergy were committed to a strong 
condemnation of the custom of seeking from the 
saints gifts which can be bestowed only by God. 
The need of such a condemnation would be denied 
by few, and was recognized even by the Council of 
Trent. ‘ All superstition,’ said the Council, ‘in the 
invocation of Saints is to be put down.’ That 
vigorous action was called for may be illustrated 
from much which, in spite of the Council of Trent 
and in marked disregard of its teaching, has con- 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 43 


tinued to exist and to be practically authorized in 
the Church of Rome to the present time. Not to 
quote so startling an instance as the well-known 
Anima Virginis, we find in one of the best Roman 
devotional books, published in Latin, and so notin 
use among the ignorant, having passed through 
many editions and been much revised, issued with 
the approbation of a Cardinal Archbishop, the 
following prayer : 


O most wise Mother, receive me among thy devotees. 
Into thy blessed hands and into the bosom of thy pity 
I commend my soul and my body with filial confidence 
now and in the hour of my death. Rule, teach, guide, 
and defend me in all things according to thy will. Look, 
O Lady, upon the prayers of thy servant, most unworthy 
though he be: look on all my necessities. To thee I fly 
_ as my only refuge: hide me under the covering of thy 
motherly protection. Do not repel me from thee, O 
Mother of pity, for without thee my soul cannot live. 
Amen! 


To quote one other instance, taken almost at 
haphazard, a French book honoured with a brief 


* Coeleste Palmetum, p. 246 (edition 8, 1884), ‘O sapientissima 
Mater ! suscipe me in clientulum tuum. In benedictas manus tuas, et 
in sinum misericordiae tuae animam et corpus meum cum filiali fiducia 
nune et in hora mortis meae commendo. Rege, doce, dirige et defende 
me in omnibus secundum tuam voluntatem. Respice,O Domina, ad 
servi tui, licet indignissimi, preces; respice ad omnes necessitates 
meas. Ad te ego velut unicum asylum meum confugio: sub pallio 
maternae protectionis tuae absconde me. Noli me a te, Mater miseri- 
cordiae, repellere ; nam sine te vivere non potest anima mea. Amen.’ 


4 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


from Pope Pius [X., and commended by many 
cardinals, archbishops, and bishops, puts in the 
mouth of those who use it words addressed to the 
holy Mother of our Lord, which make their con- 
fidence against the hour of death depend upon 
her aid.!. Such prayers for the educated, coupled 
with the state of mind of many ignorant Roman 
Catholics, supply sufficient justification for a strong 
condemnation of and resistance to the abuses of 
the invocation of saints. If a misunderstanding 
of the strong terms of the English article has had 
some share in leading English people to think too 
little about the saints, the gentler action of the 
Council of Trent has certainly failed to keep out 
much which is inconsistent with the language 
which the Council used. 

Thirdly, the Church of England left open the 
lawfulness and expediency of that limited form of 
invocation which asks the saints for the help of 
their prayers. Here, too, we believe that the 


1 Recueil complet des paillettes d’or, iv. 128, ‘A cette heure, 6 
Marie, Marie que j’ai tant de fois invoquée, soyez prés de ma couche ; 
soyez-y comme y serait ma mére si je l’avais encore! Peut-étre ma 
langue paralysée ne pourra pas prononcer votre nom, mais mon ceeur 
le redira toujours! Vous y serez, n’est-ce pas, ὃ mére de Jésus, ὃ ma 
mére? Je vous appelle maintenant pour l’heure de ma mort. Et cet 
appel me laisse le calme et la paix. Oui, serais-je seul, seul expirant 
loin de tout secours, seul sans une main aimée pour me fermer les yeux, 
je mourrai souriant parce que vous serez la, ὃ Marie, fidéle 4 ce rendez- 
vous que je vous donne; vous y serez; je le crois, je l’espére, j’en suis 
str!’ 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 45 


course taken was wisely chosen. The condemna- 
tion of the ‘ Romish doctrine’ provided against any 
recourse to the saints which infringed upon the 
prerogatives of Almighty God; in the allowance of 
invocation in its present ordinary sense in private 
devotions outside the authorized services of the 
Church care was taken not to condemn a custom 
which had the support of the teaching and practice 
of great Fathers of the East and of the West. 
The abuse was strongly condemned; the use was 
left open. 

It has been supposed by some that the prohibi- 
tion of dealings with the dead in the Old Testament 
is in itself sufficient proof that any form of invoca- 
tion of saints is wrong. Not to dwell on the fact 
that the whole question has been altered by the 
work of our Lord among the dead,' the clearer light 
thrown upon their state by Christian doctrine, and 
the teaching of St. Paul about the one Body of the 
Charch,’? it must be noticed that the prohibition of 
the Old Testament was not against seeking for the 
prayers of the departed, but against endeavouring 
to obtain information or advicefrom them. In the 


1 See 1 St. Pet. iii. 18-19. 

2 See especially 1 Cor. xii. 12-27; Eph. i. 22-3, ii. 19-22, iv. 4; 
Col. i. 18, ii. 16-9. The general imagery of the arena in Heb. xii. 1, 
though not the phrase νέφος μαρτύρων, seems to suggest that the saints 
of the old covenant have knowledge of some struggles of Christians; 
but stress cannot rightly be laid on this. 


46 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


Mosaic Law the words are, ‘ There shall not be 
found with thee any one that maketh his son or his 
daughter to pass through the fire, one that useth 
divination, one that practiseth augury, or an 
enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a con- 
sulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a 
necromancer.’' The words of Isaiah, rebuking the 
breach of this law, are, ‘ And when they shall say 
unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar 
spirits and unto the wizards, that chirp and that 
mutter, should not a people seek unto their God ? 
On behalf of the living should they seek unto the 
dead ?’? In both places it is clearly enquiry of the 
dead which is prohibited or condemned ; in both 
places the right course is shown to be in seeking 
guidance from God, since in Deuteronomy the 
prohibition is followed by the promise of the 
prophet. who is to speak in the name of God,’ 
and in Isaiah the condemnation leads on to the 
command, ‘To the law and to the testimony.’ * 
Whatever bearing these passages might have on 
seeking some gifts from the saints, and we doubt 
whether at all directly they could have any, they 
have none on seeking the help of their prayers. 
The gist of the matter is, What form of invoca- 
tion, if any, is identical in principle with the prac- 


1 Deut. xviii. 10-11. 2 Isa, viii. 19. 
3 Deut. xviii. 15-22. 4 Tsa. viii. 20. 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 47 


tice of ‘comprecation,’ or praying to God to receive 
benefit by means of the prayers of saints? If the 
request addressed to the saint is for his prayers to 
God, and if it is understood that any knowledge 
which he possesses of the request is the result of 
his beholding God or receiving revelation from 
God, then clearly the making of such request does 
not in principle differ from prayer addressed to God 
for the prayers of the saint. If, on the other hand, 
the request is for gifts which God alone can grant, 
or if it is supposed that the saint has independent 
knowledge of the words addressed to him, then, as 
clearly, such a practice is different in principle 
from ‘comprecation.’ It follows that invocation of 
the former kind is lawful, and that invocation of 
the latter kind is wrong. 

We believe, then, that each part of the action 
of the English Church on this subject was 
thoroughly in accordance with Catholic theology 
and practice. Further, it was eminently calculated 
to meet the needs of the times, and to allow for 
deep-seated characteristics of the human mind. 
The latter aspect has been admirably treated by 
Bishop Alexander Forbes, of Brechin, in his 
Explanation of the Thirty-Nine Articles : 

There will always be (he says) a tendency in human 


nature to rest in something short of the pure essence of 
God. His unapproachable holiness bears down upon the 


48 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


human spirit with a crushing weight. Anything that will 
satisfy the religious instinct, and at the same time prevent 
the soul from too great a proximity to Him Who is a 
consuming fire, will be eagerly hailed by those who 
recognize what God is and what they are, till the correc- 
tives supplied by the true faith in the images of love and 
mercy revealed in the Gospel make themselves living 
truths within the soul. . . . Not merely are there deep 
principles in the human mind which lead to a resting in 
secondary worship, but the political condition of a people 
will strongly influence belief in this respect. It cannot be 
doubted that the state of the old heathenism, at the time 
of the state establishment by Constantine, told sensibly 
in the direction of the development of saint-worship. In 
Italy, specially, the old Pagan ideas got baptized, and the 
religious devotion of the vulgar was transformed from the 
elder forms of heathenism to the purer cultus of the per- 
sonages of the Holy Gospel and of the Church. That the 
world gained immensely by the change, the most bigoted 
religionist must admit. To withdraw the mind from the 
sensual images that belonged to the beautiful but corrupt 
Nature-worship of the heathen to those of the self-denying 
heroism of the martyrs must be acknowledged as an 
immense gain by all those who hold that the imagination 
exercises power over the whole man ; but still, beneficial 
as the process was, it cannot be doubted that it carried a 
danger within it, and that it laid the foundation of a 
lower state of things in which a lower standard of re- 
ligious morality came to be tolerated, and the idea of the 
one true God to be obscured. ... At the time of the 
Reformation all this had specially to be insisted upon. 
The popularity of some devotions must have been very 
great if the offerings at St. Thomas’s shrine at Canter- 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 49 


bury in one year amounted to 984}. 6s. 3d., while that at 
our Lord’s was nothing, and at our Lady’s 4}. 1s. 8d. 
The gross immorality which was everywhere prevalent 
found a satisfaction for those spiritual aspirations which 
never die, even in the bad, in the cultus of some easy 
saint. 

But there is another aspect of the practice which it 
would be uncandid and unphilosophical to pass over. 
There are certain high-strung souls, of whose undivided 
and entire love to God there can be no doubt, whose in- 
tense personal devotion to our Lord is the warmest, and 
who realize His Passion in a measure into which our cold 
hearts cannot enter, to whom this devotion is congenial. 
In them it exists in entire subordination to the feelings 
which the incommunicable right of God to our entire 
selves engenders and cultivates. We may not be able to 
understand them, but such there are. There must, there- 
fore, be some aspect of this practice which appeals to a 
very high part of our nature, and therefore well deserves 
our careful consideration (pp. 379-82). 


And, at the end of the long and careful examina- 
tion of the evidence, in the preparation of which 
he had the invaluable help of Dr. Pusey,’ Bishop 
Forbes concluded : 


In principle, then, there is no question, herein, between 
us and any other portion of the Catholic Church. Even 
where the incommunicable attributes of God have, in 


* Liddon, Life of Edward Bowverte Pusey, iv. 146 : ‘ Pusey revised 
the Bishop’s work throughout, correcting it minutely, besides himself 
writing the explanation of some of the Articles. He supplied almost 
the whole of the passages which, under the head of Article XXIL., 
deal with the subject of purgatory and the invocation of saints.’ 


E 


50 THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 


expression at least, beeni invaded, the real underlying 
belief has been explained to be that nothing is obtained 
for man, no grace, no aid, no gift for body, soul, or spirit, 
except through or from the One Mediator between God 
and man, our adorable Lord, Christ Jesus. Prayer to the 
saints in heaven is explained, again and again, to be the 
same in kind as the prayers to the saints on earth (p. 422). 


We have written on this subject because of our 
conviction that a serious examination of it is a need 
in the Church of England at the present time. 
Side by side with thoughtful and guarded prayers 
for the intercessions of the saints there has grown 
up of late years much that is undesirable and 
harmful. Devotions are used among ourselves 
which are not less extravagant than some in use 
among Roman Catholics. There are those who 
are cultivating a religious temper which makes it 
natural that in the hour of death they should 
commit themselves to the protection of the saints 
rather than to the mercy of Almighty God. 

In view of the present needs of the English 
Church much which has recently been said or 
written about the invocation of saints is unsatis- 
fying. It is impossible that the matter should 
be settled in an offhand manner. The rash state- 
ments sometimes heard in sermons or read in 
newspapers, and made in defiance of history and 
Catholic theology, that the invocation of saints, 


THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS 51 


as necessarily involved in the doctrine of the 
Communion of Saints, is an essential part of the 
Christian system, are simply mischievous. Nor 
are indiscriminating assertions of the unlawfulness ~ 
of the practice likely to be profitable. Sweeping 
condemnations which ignore real differences will 
convince nobody. Abuses are not met by failing 
to recognize a lawful use. 

It may well be wished that among clergy and 
laity alike may be found the balanced judgment 
which characterized Bishop William Forbes of 
Edinburgh when he wrote : 


Let God alone be religiously adored: let Him alone 
be prayed to, through Christ, Who is the only and sole 
Mediator, truly and properly speaking, between God and 
man. Let not the very ancient custom received in the 
universal Church, as well Greek as Latin, of addressing 
the angels and saints after the manner we have mentioned 
be condemned or rejected as impious, nor even as vain 
and foolish, by the more rigid Protestants. Let the foul 
abuses and superstitions which have crept in be taken 
away. And so peace may thereafter easily be established 
and sanctioned between the dissentient parties, as regards 
this controversy. Which may the God of peace and of all 
pious concord vouchsafe to grant for the sake of His only- 
begotten Son.! 

To despise or condemn the universal consent of the 
whole Church is a thing perilous to the last degree.’ 


' Forbes, Consid. mod. et pacif. ii. 812, 818. 
2 Tbid. ii. 264, 265. 





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